WEBVTT

00:00.000 --> 00:17.120
I want to talk about why I'm so passionate about community.

00:17.120 --> 00:21.320
You know, there's clearly a role for government, and we need to remind people of that these

00:21.320 --> 00:22.600
days.

00:22.600 --> 00:27.280
There's a role for nonprofit organizations, but I think there's absolutely no substitute

00:27.280 --> 00:31.240
for community when it comes to the things we care most deeply about.

00:31.240 --> 00:36.360
So I want to give a few illustrations about the power of community, and a few stories.

00:36.360 --> 00:37.720
The one's from the Ballard neighborhood.

00:37.720 --> 00:39.360
How many people here from Ballard?

00:39.360 --> 00:43.000
All right, all right.

00:43.000 --> 00:47.400
So the first unique power of community is the power to care for the earth.

00:47.400 --> 00:51.040
You know, we can have all the – invent all the green technology we want, but if people

00:51.040 --> 00:54.600
don't actually adopt it, it doesn't do much good.

00:54.600 --> 00:58.520
And I think it's only when people connect with each other in community, when they feel

00:58.520 --> 01:02.560
some connection to each other and the place that they share, that they become good stewards

01:02.560 --> 01:04.000
of the environment.

01:04.000 --> 01:06.440
And they recognize that collectively their actions are going to make a difference.

01:06.440 --> 01:10.480
If you just think of yourself as one individual, what difference does it make if I don't recycle?

01:10.480 --> 01:13.440
If I waste gas, I'm one person on this huge planet.

01:13.440 --> 01:16.920
But it's in community that we take some responsibility.

01:16.920 --> 01:19.240
So I wanted to share a story from Ballard.

01:19.240 --> 01:24.680
Ballard at the time – this was 28 years ago when we started the Department of Neighborhoods

01:24.680 --> 01:28.400
– was the neighborhood in Seattle that had the least number of street trees of any neighborhood

01:28.400 --> 01:30.040
outside of downtown.

01:30.040 --> 01:34.000
It also had the least number of parks of any neighborhood in Seattle.

01:34.000 --> 01:39.720
There was a woman in Ballard named Dervilla Gowen who cared passionately about street

01:39.720 --> 01:40.720
trees.

01:40.720 --> 01:42.480
She wanted to see trees up and down the streets.

01:42.480 --> 01:44.500
So she put notices in her church bulletin.

01:44.500 --> 01:47.660
She put a notice in the corner grocery store.

01:47.660 --> 01:52.400
She put a notice in the Ballard News Tribune advertising for other people who shared her

01:52.400 --> 01:54.280
passion for trees.

01:54.280 --> 01:57.440
And she tried to find somebody at every block in Ballard.

01:57.440 --> 02:01.520
And if nobody came forward, she'd go to that block and knock on every door until she convinced

02:01.520 --> 02:04.940
somebody that they shared her passion for street trees.

02:04.940 --> 02:08.160
And then she got that person to sign a pledge form saying, I'll come do a training about

02:08.160 --> 02:13.300
how to plant and take care of the trees, and I'll recruit my neighbors to do the same thing.

02:13.300 --> 02:16.880
So she turned in all of her pledge forms with her matching fund application.

02:16.880 --> 02:23.720
So one day, trucks pulled into our neighborhood with 1,080 trees.

02:23.720 --> 02:26.800
Dropped them off at every block in Ballard.

02:26.800 --> 02:30.800
Dervilla went and knocked on the door of the block captain and said, the trees are here.

02:30.800 --> 02:32.640
And the block captain knocked on the neighbor's doors.

02:32.640 --> 02:37.220
That day over 1,000 people came out and planted trees up and down the streets.

02:37.220 --> 02:38.640
People felt incredibly empowered.

02:38.640 --> 02:40.960
Beginning of the day, there's no street trees.

02:40.960 --> 02:42.880
The end of the day, they had tree-lined streets.

02:42.880 --> 02:46.720
They said, God, look what we can do when we work together as a community.

02:46.720 --> 02:51.400
But they said, we still have the least number of parks of any neighborhood in Seattle.

02:51.400 --> 02:53.800
So they walked around the neighborhood looking for potential park sites.

02:53.800 --> 02:57.920
Had a hard time finding them because the neighborhood's pretty developed, pretty built out.

02:57.920 --> 03:00.120
But they finally found this old rundown house.

03:00.120 --> 03:03.360
Used to serve as a nursery right next to the Crown Hill Business District.

03:03.360 --> 03:04.560
It became a problem property.

03:04.560 --> 03:07.840
It was overgrown, derelict house.

03:07.840 --> 03:11.640
And they convinced the city to buy it to turn it into a park.

03:11.640 --> 03:15.660
The city had some open space bond money, so they used that money to buy the property.

03:15.660 --> 03:19.320
But they had absolutely no money to design or build the park.

03:19.320 --> 03:22.000
So the community did it themselves.

03:22.000 --> 03:25.680
Local landscape architect volunteered her services and worked with the neighbors.

03:25.680 --> 03:28.600
And together, they designed and built Baker Park.

03:28.600 --> 03:30.560
This is the entryway into the park.

03:30.560 --> 03:31.560
Some of the landscaping.

03:31.560 --> 03:35.500
There were some beautiful old trees in this park because it used to be a nursery.

03:35.500 --> 03:38.840
And one of them was one of those weird monkey puzzle trees with the strange limbs.

03:38.840 --> 03:39.840
And it died.

03:39.840 --> 03:42.000
They're trying to figure out how to remove it.

03:42.000 --> 03:45.400
And then one of the neighbors who was Native American had a better idea.

03:45.400 --> 03:48.320
They carved it in place as a totem.

03:48.320 --> 03:49.320
And here's some of the detail.

03:49.320 --> 03:54.520
We have a bear with a frog in his mouth, kind of a symbol of returning nature to the city.

03:54.520 --> 03:55.520
Well this group went on.

03:55.520 --> 03:57.160
The next year, they built a community garden.

03:57.160 --> 04:01.240
This is now one of 85 organic community gardens we have in the city of Seattle with 7,000

04:01.240 --> 04:05.600
urban gardeners collectively donating 10 tons of organic produce to our food banks every

04:05.600 --> 04:06.800
year.

04:06.800 --> 04:09.600
All built by the community themselves.

04:09.600 --> 04:11.540
And this is their most recent park.

04:11.540 --> 04:13.520
This is the site of a former house.

04:13.520 --> 04:18.400
So to commemorate the house, they built all the furniture out of cement, including this

04:18.400 --> 04:20.560
coffee table and lamp.

04:20.560 --> 04:25.520
And at the dedication of this park, they unveiled a timeline that shows the 14 parks they've

04:25.520 --> 04:28.240
built over the last 20 years.

04:28.240 --> 04:30.560
Every one of them with volunteers.

04:30.560 --> 04:33.040
They restored a salmon estuary.

04:33.040 --> 04:35.460
They reforested a natural area.

04:35.460 --> 04:37.160
They worked with the kids to build a skate park.

04:37.160 --> 04:38.160
They built ball fields.

04:38.160 --> 04:39.160
They built playgrounds.

04:39.160 --> 04:40.160
Incredible.

04:40.160 --> 04:44.440
They said, well this is fantastic, we've made our neighborhood a better place, but

04:44.440 --> 04:46.360
we're concerned about what's happening to the planet.

04:46.360 --> 04:48.440
We're concerned about climate change.

04:48.440 --> 04:52.120
So they formed an all-volunteer group called Sustainable Ballard.

04:52.120 --> 04:55.280
And the big thing they have each year, I think they just had their seventh one, saw you over

04:55.280 --> 05:02.960
there, was they have music and they have food and they have booths to educate people about

05:02.960 --> 05:05.480
what they can do to reduce their carbon footprint.

05:05.480 --> 05:10.800
And the first booth you go to is the on-drivers license station, where you go and you check

05:10.800 --> 05:13.840
all the ways you won't drive over the next month.

05:13.840 --> 05:16.960
And when you do, you get a laminated on-drivers license.

05:16.960 --> 05:17.960
It's pretty cool.

05:17.960 --> 05:21.000
It looks just like my official Washington State driver's license.

05:21.000 --> 05:22.880
Julia Fields is the one who's organized this.

05:22.880 --> 05:26.240
So she says, I'm going to walk, I'm going to bike, I'm going to take transit, et cetera,

05:26.240 --> 05:27.240
et cetera.

05:27.240 --> 05:33.640
And when you get your on-drivers license, it entitles you to drive the shuffle bus.

05:33.640 --> 05:36.040
This is a foot-powered mobile that's going down the street.

05:36.040 --> 05:39.000
It's kind of a Fred Flintstone type mobile.

05:39.000 --> 05:40.240
Gets everybody's attention.

05:40.240 --> 05:43.160
Gets people thinking about, what could I do to get out of my car?

05:43.160 --> 05:45.000
What could I do to reduce my carbon footprint?

05:45.000 --> 05:47.320
This, of course, has created a movement.

05:47.320 --> 05:51.240
There are now 67 of these organizations all over the Puget Sound area.

05:51.240 --> 05:55.440
Every neighborhood in Seattle, the suburban communities have organized their own all-volunteer

05:55.440 --> 05:57.000
sustainability groups.

05:57.000 --> 06:02.480
Collectively, they call themselves Scallops, sustainable communities all over Puget Sound.

06:02.480 --> 06:06.120
But it all started with DeVille County and the street trees 23 years ago.

06:06.120 --> 06:10.000
There's incredible untapped potential in our communities.

06:10.000 --> 06:13.320
Another unique power of community is the power to prevent crime.

06:13.320 --> 06:16.800
We could have police officers on every street in our city.

06:16.800 --> 06:20.000
And we certainly wouldn't feel as safe, and it certainly wouldn't be as appropriate as

06:20.000 --> 06:22.320
neighbors watching out for each other.

06:22.320 --> 06:26.480
This is a story from the Soto neighborhood, the warehouse, industrial area just south

06:26.480 --> 06:28.160
of downtown.

06:28.160 --> 06:33.160
And this is the corridor through which the buses and now the link light rail travel.

06:33.160 --> 06:36.040
First view that commuters and tourists get of Seattle.

06:36.040 --> 06:40.640
And it looked terrible because it was just the backs of warehouses covered with graffiti.

06:40.640 --> 06:43.320
There was garbage all along the train tracks there.

06:43.320 --> 06:48.360
Well, Mike Perringer here, who worked in one of the local industries, was sick about this

06:48.360 --> 06:49.360
image of his neighborhood.

06:49.360 --> 06:53.640
He had a great idea, and he says, why don't we see this as an urban art corridor?

06:53.640 --> 06:58.360
Why don't we see the backs of these warehouses as potential canvases for murals?

06:58.360 --> 07:02.280
But he had an even better idea, and he worked with our court system, and he asked the judges,

07:02.280 --> 07:06.840
could you offer the kids who get busted for graffiti an alternative sentence where they

07:06.840 --> 07:10.000
could come and help us to create the murals?

07:10.000 --> 07:13.040
Wasn't an easy decision for the kids because they had to show up at work on time, they

07:13.040 --> 07:16.920
had to dress appropriately, they got life skills training, but they got mentored by

07:16.920 --> 07:18.520
professional artists.

07:18.520 --> 07:21.480
And young people create every one of these murals.

07:21.480 --> 07:25.760
And we found that as long as the kids were involved in this program, not one of them

07:25.760 --> 07:28.000
reoffended.

07:28.000 --> 07:31.500
The problem, of course, in Seattle is you can only paint outdoor murals three months

07:31.500 --> 07:34.480
a year because it's raining the other nine months.

07:34.480 --> 07:38.800
So Mike came up with another great idea, got a local warehouse to donate their space, and

07:38.800 --> 07:43.200
in there they create murals in four by eight sheets of plywood, put those around construction

07:43.200 --> 07:45.960
sites to beautify the construction sites.

07:45.960 --> 07:50.480
The developers pay for those murals, keeps the program sustainable over time.

07:50.480 --> 07:56.040
So now there have been over 1,500 murals created through this program, and over 5,000 young

07:56.040 --> 07:57.040
people participated.

07:57.040 --> 08:00.200
And you don't have to get busted to get into the program.

08:00.200 --> 08:04.800
We didn't want to create negative incentives.

08:04.800 --> 08:09.080
A third unique value of community is the power to care for one another.

08:09.080 --> 08:13.440
I think that's probably been the silver lining of the economic crisis is people are rediscovering

08:13.440 --> 08:15.160
how important community is.

08:15.160 --> 08:19.880
The very time where people's needs are the greatest, our government, our nonprofits have

08:19.880 --> 08:22.480
the fewest resources to respond.

08:22.480 --> 08:25.600
People are realizing all they really have to fall back on is each other.

08:25.600 --> 08:31.320
In many ways, we're learning about the power of community from our new immigrants and refugees.

08:31.320 --> 08:34.060
They understand community like nobody else.

08:34.060 --> 08:38.920
They come from places where all they have to count on is each other.

08:38.920 --> 08:40.840
They have so much to teach us.

08:40.840 --> 08:43.880
This is a story about the Eritrean community.

08:43.880 --> 08:49.600
Came to Seattle fleeing war with very little, often working a couple jobs, low-wage jobs,

08:49.600 --> 08:54.120
lacking a lot of tenants, working in restaurants, a couple jobs to make ends meet.

08:54.120 --> 08:55.720
But they pool all their resources.

08:55.720 --> 08:58.840
They form a mutual assistance association to support one another.

08:58.840 --> 09:02.340
They were afraid they were losing their kids to the streets.

09:02.340 --> 09:06.880
So they bought this old rundown house in Rainier Valley, just a block south of I-90, a couple

09:06.880 --> 09:09.320
blocks west of Rainier.

09:09.320 --> 09:12.600
And they went to fix up this house after work, after working a couple jobs.

09:12.600 --> 09:16.040
They'd volunteer and they repaired the roof on this house.

09:16.040 --> 09:20.240
They put in new electricity, new plumbing, new wall board, bought old sewing machines,

09:20.240 --> 09:22.960
taught each other how to use them, bought old computers.

09:22.960 --> 09:26.460
Kids taught their parents how to use the computer.

09:26.460 --> 09:29.320
In the basement, they put in a commercial kitchen.

09:29.320 --> 09:31.120
They cooked their traditional meals together.

09:31.120 --> 09:33.840
They shared their dance, their music, their culture, their language.

09:33.840 --> 09:37.440
In a turn, the young people were teaching their parents English.

09:37.440 --> 09:39.240
They're incredibly effective.

09:39.240 --> 09:42.600
They quickly outgrew that space and they came to me and said, Jim, can we get some matching

09:42.600 --> 09:45.280
funds so we can build a new cultural center?

09:45.280 --> 09:48.240
I said, yeah, but you need to come up with a match and at least a quarter of the match

09:48.240 --> 09:51.280
needs to be from your community.

09:51.280 --> 09:55.360
They came back to me one week later with $30,000.

09:55.360 --> 10:01.400
300 member households, each putting in $100.

10:01.400 --> 10:06.400
These are people who have nothing, for whom $100 is a fortune.

10:06.400 --> 10:11.280
And I keep thinking if we all had that same commitment to our community and put that percentage

10:11.280 --> 10:15.520
of our resources into our community, we could take it to a whole different level.

10:15.520 --> 10:18.200
We have so much to learn.

10:18.200 --> 10:20.720
And here's they're celebrating their new cultural center.

10:20.720 --> 10:27.000
Well, here's some of the other ways in which I think communities uniquely qualified.

10:27.000 --> 10:31.160
We've seen over and over again with emergencies, whether that was the earthquake in Christchurch

10:31.160 --> 10:37.200
or the earthquakes in Japan or whether it was a hurricane in New Orleans.

10:37.200 --> 10:39.320
Government can't get out there quickly enough.

10:39.320 --> 10:43.240
In times of emergency, people really are dependent on each other, but oftentimes realizing when

10:43.240 --> 10:44.880
it's too late.

10:44.880 --> 10:47.840
Our very health and welfare is tied to our community.

10:47.840 --> 10:51.080
There have been studies that show that about 10% of health outcomes can be attributed to

10:51.080 --> 10:52.880
health care professionals.

10:52.880 --> 10:54.520
Most of it has to do with our economics.

10:54.520 --> 10:55.880
It has to do with our environment.

10:55.880 --> 10:58.600
It has to do with our social relationships, with our behavior.

10:58.600 --> 11:02.080
It's the kinds of things that can be affected by community.

11:02.080 --> 11:07.560
Our happiness, our very democracy depends on community and, of course, social justice.

11:07.560 --> 11:11.520
We've all seen no major social change ever happens from the top down.

11:11.520 --> 11:15.600
It all happens bottom up, whether that was the civil rights movement, the women's rights

11:15.600 --> 11:20.920
movement, the gay lesbian movement, the anti-war movement, the environmental movement.

11:20.920 --> 11:22.440
It's all been bottom up.

11:22.440 --> 11:27.020
So without strong communities, we can't have social justice.

11:27.020 --> 11:31.200
The problem is at the very time we most need community, it's in its greatest state of crisis.

11:31.200 --> 11:35.040
I don't know how many of you are familiar with Robert Putnam's work, a professor at

11:35.040 --> 11:39.720
Harvard University, he wrote a book called Bowling Alone, tracking the incredible breakdown

11:39.720 --> 11:43.920
of community life in North America over the past 50 years, how fewer and fewer people

11:43.920 --> 11:48.440
belong to the traditional associations, fewer and fewer people voting, fewer families eating

11:48.440 --> 11:49.440
together.

11:49.440 --> 11:53.720
And he cites lots of reasons, and I've added to those with my list here, one of which is

11:53.720 --> 11:58.720
we used to live, learn, work, and play all in the same village or in the same neighborhood.

11:58.720 --> 12:02.640
And now we've created single purpose places where we have bedroom communities where people

12:02.640 --> 12:08.160
just go to sleep, and where we have malls where people drive a half hour to shop, and

12:08.160 --> 12:10.880
where people might commute an hour to work.

12:10.880 --> 12:14.360
In many ways, we have many different communities, but in a sense, no community at all because

12:14.360 --> 12:19.800
their lives are so disjointed, we don't bump into the same people over and over again.

12:19.800 --> 12:23.000
Increased mobility, where it used to be generation after generation, our families would live

12:23.000 --> 12:27.600
in the same village, the same town, and now most people have moved multiple times over

12:27.600 --> 12:28.940
the course of their life.

12:28.940 --> 12:31.760
And when we're always on the move, it's hard to build relationships.

12:31.760 --> 12:33.600
And if we know we're just going to move again, why bother?

12:33.600 --> 12:36.800
It's a lot of work.

12:36.800 --> 12:40.240
Longer work days, and more women in the workforce.

12:40.240 --> 12:42.120
Women have always been the leaders in our community efforts.

12:42.120 --> 12:44.960
There's less time to devote to community.

12:44.960 --> 12:49.160
Increasing consumerism, where people are chasing the material things rather than taking satisfaction

12:49.160 --> 12:52.480
and looking for happiness in relationships.

12:52.480 --> 12:53.480
Fear in many neighborhoods.

12:53.480 --> 12:56.160
There have been studies that show in many neighborhoods that's the number one thing

12:56.160 --> 12:59.720
breaking down community, where people are afraid to come out of their homes.

12:59.720 --> 13:03.320
And when they're afraid to come out, they have even more reason to be afraid, because

13:03.320 --> 13:04.320
they don't know their neighbors.

13:04.320 --> 13:06.680
It's fear of the unknown.

13:06.680 --> 13:10.880
Electronic screens, I just spoke at a health conference in Banff, and a researcher reported

13:10.880 --> 13:15.480
that young people are spending an average of 10 to 12 hours a day in front of screens

13:15.480 --> 13:18.360
of all types.

13:18.360 --> 13:21.880
Less time to be involved in personal relationships.

13:21.880 --> 13:26.760
Increasing globalization, decisions being made further and further from where we live.

13:26.760 --> 13:28.280
Professionalization and specialization.

13:28.280 --> 13:32.280
We have professionals doing what communities used to do for themselves.

13:32.280 --> 13:34.440
Specialization, where everything's been divided into specialties.

13:34.440 --> 13:39.080
So we separated the people with disabilities from the young people, from the old people.

13:39.080 --> 13:41.040
Everybody's being organized the way agencies are organized.

13:41.040 --> 13:47.640
It's hard for us to come together as a community when we're all in separate silos.

13:47.640 --> 13:50.640
And probably a good illustration, again, is from Ballard.

13:50.640 --> 13:55.440
There's, I think a lot of you know this story, a woman who lived in this house for over 50

13:55.440 --> 13:56.440
years.

13:56.440 --> 13:59.720
She lived in this house, developer owned the property on either side of her, wanted to

13:59.720 --> 14:02.760
buy her house to put in a large mixed-use development.

14:02.760 --> 14:03.760
She said, I'm not selling.

14:03.760 --> 14:07.320
He said, but I'll give you a million dollars.

14:07.320 --> 14:11.800
And her house is only worth about 150,000.

14:11.800 --> 14:13.600
She said, I'm still not selling.

14:13.600 --> 14:17.940
My community is worth more to me than a million dollars.

14:17.940 --> 14:19.880
So the developer responded.

14:19.880 --> 14:27.000
In many ways, this is a symbol to me of how so many people experience community these

14:27.000 --> 14:29.760
days, where they feel powerless in their communities.

14:29.760 --> 14:32.680
They feel that their community isn't being shaped by the people who live there, but by

14:32.680 --> 14:35.960
outside money, by outside powers.

14:35.960 --> 14:39.960
And how so many people, even places where there's a pretty strong sense of community,

14:39.960 --> 14:44.640
there are so many individuals who feel cut off from community, who feel isolated, who

14:44.640 --> 14:47.640
have no friendships.

14:47.640 --> 14:54.400
Another related issue is the crisis in democracy, where people are feeling less and more and

14:54.400 --> 15:01.160
more powerless, where people are starting to think of themselves as taxpayers rather

15:01.160 --> 15:05.760
than as citizens, where we've got people organizing against their government and saying

15:05.760 --> 15:10.240
government is the problem.

15:10.240 --> 15:15.720
Every form of government has taxpayers, but only democracies have citizens.

15:15.720 --> 15:19.040
In Fremont, they were so mad at one point that they erected a rocket on the side of

15:19.040 --> 15:23.080
one of their businesses and announced that it was aimed at City Hall.

15:23.080 --> 15:27.540
They declared themselves the Artist Republic of Fremont.

15:27.540 --> 15:29.240
So now I've totally depressed everybody, right?

15:29.240 --> 15:33.320
I talked about how important community and democracy are and how it's going down the

15:33.320 --> 15:34.320
toilet.

15:34.320 --> 15:37.080
So I want to talk about how do we rebuild that.

15:37.080 --> 15:39.320
And that's why I think community organizing is so important.

15:39.320 --> 15:41.640
I've heard a lot about organizing lately.

15:41.640 --> 15:45.640
It's been promoted because of Barack Obama.

15:45.640 --> 15:53.040
Hillary Clinton and Newt Gingrich have been some of the main people speaking about community

15:53.040 --> 15:55.600
organizing, not always positively.

15:55.600 --> 15:59.320
But community organizing is a process through which people who live in proximity to one

15:59.320 --> 16:07.760
another come together in a democratic association to decide and act on their common interests.

16:07.760 --> 16:12.200
And there's really two different forms of community organizing, two approaches.

16:12.200 --> 16:17.040
One is organizing to hold outside institutions accountable for meeting community needs, and

16:17.040 --> 16:21.720
the other is mobilizing the community's own capacity to address local needs and to realize

16:21.720 --> 16:22.720
its vision.

16:22.720 --> 16:26.280
So I'm going to briefly talk about both kinds of organizing.

16:26.280 --> 16:29.200
First one is the one I came to Seattle to start in 1976.

16:29.200 --> 16:34.480
I started as an Alinsky-style community organizer in Southeast Seattle.

16:34.480 --> 16:38.200
And Alinsky basically taught – this is a really rough summary – but he basically

16:38.200 --> 16:40.200
says there's two kinds of power in our society.

16:40.200 --> 16:43.960
There's the power of money and there's the power of people.

16:43.960 --> 16:47.680
And if you don't have a lot of money, you better have a lot of people because that's

16:47.680 --> 16:49.320
how you make change.

16:49.320 --> 16:50.320
So we organized.

16:50.320 --> 16:54.020
When the city tried to put garbage incinerators in our neighborhood, we pushed for the model

16:54.020 --> 16:56.400
recycling program.

16:56.400 --> 17:00.760
When our utility bills were skyrocketing, we started up the light brigade and started

17:00.760 --> 17:06.000
up the campaign, which eventually led to the city voting to get out of whoops and the shutdown

17:06.000 --> 17:08.480
of the whoops nuclear power plants.

17:08.480 --> 17:12.040
This is a demonstration to get the railroads in the city to agree to put in a new bridge

17:12.040 --> 17:16.200
to replace the failing Lucille Street Bridge that was connecting Georgetown and Beacon

17:16.200 --> 17:17.520
Hill.

17:17.520 --> 17:19.760
All kinds of campaigns that we did.

17:19.760 --> 17:25.120
And it was largely a faith-based network, bringing all the different religious organizations

17:25.120 --> 17:27.840
in Rainier Valley together along with the neighborhood associations.

17:27.840 --> 17:33.200
There's a similar effort like that today with the Sound Alliance.

17:33.200 --> 17:37.680
I was – I spent a lot of time in London recently, and just incredible what they're

17:37.680 --> 17:39.440
doing with their community organizing there.

17:39.440 --> 17:45.160
There, they've got a group called Citizens UK that, again, came out of Olinsky's work,

17:45.160 --> 17:50.680
but it's a coalition of faith-based organizations, both churches and mosques, that are working

17:50.680 --> 17:51.680
together.

17:51.680 --> 17:53.280
And they've been incredibly effective.

17:53.280 --> 17:58.320
Together they're putting pressure on every employer they can think of, from universities

17:58.320 --> 18:05.200
to hospitals to chain stores to demand that they pay living wages.

18:05.200 --> 18:06.200
Huge effort.

18:06.200 --> 18:12.840
They've got multiple contracts signed with the city of London, with all kinds of employers,

18:12.840 --> 18:17.160
agreeing that if people are working hard, they're working eight hours a day in the

18:17.160 --> 18:19.160
community, they should be able to live in their community.

18:19.160 --> 18:21.280
They should be paid enough to actually live in their community.

18:21.280 --> 18:23.400
So they've been incredibly effective.

18:23.400 --> 18:27.080
So effective now that they were able to get a contract signed with the Olympics, which

18:27.080 --> 18:29.520
are coming to London this year.

18:29.520 --> 18:34.280
And everybody who works in the Olympics will be paid a living wage.

18:34.280 --> 18:35.760
And this is how they have so much power.

18:35.760 --> 18:38.360
This is one of their meetings.

18:38.360 --> 18:41.480
And they were also successful in getting the Olympic Village, which is going to be turned

18:41.480 --> 18:47.760
back to the community after the Olympics, to be a permanently affordable housing trust.

18:47.760 --> 18:48.960
Incredibly effective organizations.

18:48.960 --> 18:54.160
So I just believe very strongly that we'll never have social justice unless we have strong

18:54.160 --> 18:58.360
community organizing and strong community organizations.

18:58.360 --> 19:01.440
But community organizing tends to start with this map of our communities.

19:01.440 --> 19:05.720
It tends to focus on what the problems are, what's missing in our community.

19:05.720 --> 19:09.080
And what I'd like to suggest is that when we do that, we're only looking at half the

19:09.080 --> 19:10.080
glass.

19:10.080 --> 19:12.920
And frankly, we're looking at the part that's kind of the useless part of the glass, the

19:12.920 --> 19:16.400
part that you can't do anything with, the half empty portion.

19:16.400 --> 19:20.200
So what's really powerful is to also focus on the other half of the glass.

19:20.200 --> 19:22.960
And it's the part we often neglect.

19:22.960 --> 19:27.620
Because government, nonprofits tend to focus on what's missing in the community.

19:27.620 --> 19:31.920
Because we often say that agencies need needs, right?

19:31.920 --> 19:33.640
If we didn't have needs, there wouldn't be a role for government.

19:33.640 --> 19:35.560
There wouldn't be a role for nonprofits.

19:35.560 --> 19:37.280
Thank goodness we've got them.

19:37.280 --> 19:40.680
Because we have great needs in our communities that can't be addressed adequately by the

19:40.680 --> 19:41.680
community.

19:41.680 --> 19:46.800
But if that becomes our only map of the community, we're missing out on these incredible resources,

19:46.800 --> 19:50.600
untapped resources that are in absolutely every community.

19:50.600 --> 19:54.960
So and starting with the strengths of communities, another approach to community organizing,

19:54.960 --> 19:58.880
which we call asset-based community development.

19:58.880 --> 20:02.740
And it's built on several ideas, one, or several different kinds of assets.

20:02.740 --> 20:07.240
Government is recognizing absolutely every individual in our community has incredible

20:07.240 --> 20:09.280
gifts to give.

20:09.280 --> 20:10.280
Everybody without exception.

20:10.280 --> 20:13.160
And we like to think about them as three kinds of gifts.

20:13.160 --> 20:15.920
One are gifts of the heads, that person's knowledge.

20:15.920 --> 20:18.040
Gifts of the heart, that person's passions.

20:18.040 --> 20:21.320
And gifts of the hands, that person's skills.

20:21.320 --> 20:23.080
Absolutely everybody's got these.

20:23.080 --> 20:29.440
But unfortunately in our society, we're increasingly putting labels on huge sections of our population

20:29.440 --> 20:33.480
that define people not by their gifts, but by their needs.

20:33.480 --> 20:36.240
We use terms like homeless.

20:36.240 --> 20:39.960
We think about homeless person, you think about a lot of gifts?

20:39.960 --> 20:41.800
You think about what they're lacking.

20:41.800 --> 20:43.240
A home.

20:43.240 --> 20:47.720
I have a friend who's a minister in a church, New Prospect Baptist Church in Cincinnati,

20:47.720 --> 20:48.720
Ohio.

20:48.720 --> 20:51.720
His congregation has a soup kitchen in the basement for homeless men.

20:51.720 --> 20:56.160
And finally somebody got the idea and said, why don't we interview these men, find out

20:56.160 --> 20:59.240
what their gifts are.

20:59.240 --> 21:02.480
Turns out a lot of these men like to cook.

21:02.480 --> 21:04.800
They said, would you like to help cook the meals in the soup kitchen?

21:04.800 --> 21:05.800
They were overjoyed.

21:05.800 --> 21:09.800
Nobody ever thought to ask them that before.

21:09.800 --> 21:14.640
So after a while, the homeless men and the members of the church are cooking and eating

21:14.640 --> 21:15.880
together.

21:15.880 --> 21:20.560
It was hard to tell who were the providers and who were the clients, because it wasn't

21:20.560 --> 21:22.480
about services anymore.

21:22.480 --> 21:24.140
It was about community.

21:24.140 --> 21:27.200
It was about everybody supporting each other.

21:27.200 --> 21:31.160
Sharing their gifts with each other.

21:31.160 --> 21:37.000
Some of the other labels we use are unemployed, poor person, non-English speaking, single

21:37.000 --> 21:41.640
parent, addict, offender, disabled.

21:41.640 --> 21:43.040
That one really drives me crazy.

21:43.040 --> 21:46.640
How many people in this room have no disability?

21:46.640 --> 21:49.540
I see some eyeglasses.

21:49.540 --> 21:50.720
My disability is my memory.

21:50.720 --> 21:52.080
It gets worse every year.

21:52.080 --> 21:56.960
But when I'm applying for a job, I don't say, I have this disability, but please hire me.

21:56.960 --> 22:03.120
And yet there's a growing section of our population that we define solely in terms of their disability.

22:03.120 --> 22:06.360
And when we do, we overlook their gifts.

22:06.360 --> 22:10.360
And when we just focus on people's needs, they become clients in a service system.

22:10.360 --> 22:14.960
When we focus on people's gifts, they become citizens in our community.

22:14.960 --> 22:18.560
And everybody has both needs and gifts.

22:18.560 --> 22:22.240
But somehow in our society, we've created two classes of people.

22:22.240 --> 22:24.180
Those with the needs and those with the gifts.

22:24.180 --> 22:28.640
And then we wonder why those labeled people aren't active in our communities.

22:28.640 --> 22:29.640
They're invisible.

22:29.640 --> 22:30.640
They're part of a service system.

22:30.640 --> 22:34.000
They aren't part of our community.

22:34.000 --> 22:38.320
So just an illustration from Limerick, Ireland, where I've done some work with my colleague

22:38.320 --> 22:40.240
Cormac Russell.

22:40.240 --> 22:42.580
And this is the neighborhood his family's from.

22:42.580 --> 22:44.200
This is called Ballinacora Weston.

22:44.200 --> 22:48.960
It's one of three social housing communities in Limerick.

22:48.960 --> 22:54.400
And it's also our way towards Parrish.

22:54.400 --> 22:59.120
These three housing communities have had incredible problems with gang activity.

22:59.120 --> 23:01.400
Ballinacora Weston in particular.

23:01.400 --> 23:02.400
Really scary gangs.

23:02.400 --> 23:05.480
There have been several murders in that neighborhood.

23:05.480 --> 23:07.480
Small neighborhood.

23:07.480 --> 23:11.280
The government's solution was we're going to come in and buy out people's homes and

23:11.280 --> 23:15.480
we're going to tear down this community and rebuild it.

23:15.480 --> 23:18.640
They did that without consulting the residents.

23:18.640 --> 23:21.000
But one at a time they started buying up these houses.

23:21.000 --> 23:23.960
They became boarded up.

23:23.960 --> 23:27.440
They became covered with graffiti.

23:27.440 --> 23:31.120
There was garbage absolutely everywhere.

23:31.120 --> 23:36.320
And then with the collapse of the economy in Ireland, there's absolutely no money to

23:36.320 --> 23:37.880
carry through on the plan.

23:37.880 --> 23:40.080
So people are worse off than ever.

23:40.080 --> 23:41.080
People are living.

23:41.080 --> 23:44.720
This is one of those neighborhoods where people are in fear for good reason.

23:44.720 --> 23:46.320
And they're behind closed doors.

23:46.320 --> 23:49.720
And you can't build community when people are behind closed doors.

23:49.720 --> 23:55.760
But one of those label groups, the at-risk youth, we hardly ever talk about young people

23:55.760 --> 23:58.720
anymore these days without that adjective at risk.

23:58.720 --> 24:01.080
And yet who's got more creativity?

24:01.080 --> 24:02.760
Who's got more energy?

24:02.760 --> 24:08.800
Who's got more at stake in the future of our community than young people?

24:08.800 --> 24:14.140
One of these at-risk young people organized for friends and on Christmas Eve they went

24:14.140 --> 24:17.640
around house to house Christmas caroling.

24:17.640 --> 24:18.640
Incredible bravery.

24:18.640 --> 24:24.360
And it gave everybody else the confidence to start coming out of their homes.

24:24.360 --> 24:31.880
And so they started painting out the graffiti in the neighborhood, cleaning up the streets.

24:31.880 --> 24:35.840
And then a problem property where all the drug deals were going down that was neglected,

24:35.840 --> 24:39.120
that was overgrown, they created a garden of hope.

24:39.120 --> 24:42.600
And here they are working together again with young people taking the lead with support

24:42.600 --> 24:45.680
from some of the adults in the community.

24:45.680 --> 24:50.520
But one of the toughest neighborhoods and just the power, the power of taking those

24:50.520 --> 24:59.240
labels off and releasing those gifts that everybody has to offer.

24:59.240 --> 25:03.800
A second asset that every community has are voluntary associations.

25:03.800 --> 25:07.880
These are those democratic organizations where people come together and do collectively what

25:07.880 --> 25:08.880
the kid do individually.

25:08.880 --> 25:13.240
We usually don't have staff, you know, no budget.

25:13.240 --> 25:15.640
Like our neighborhood associations in Seattle.

25:15.640 --> 25:19.920
When I'm meeting with neighborhood associations, working with voluntary associations, I emphasize

25:19.920 --> 25:21.760
the importance of working with faith-based groups.

25:21.760 --> 25:26.280
It's a key group that's often left out of our community work.

25:26.280 --> 25:30.200
But when I'm in faith-based groups, I urge them to reach out beyond faith-based groups

25:30.200 --> 25:33.720
to all the other kinds of ways people are organized in our communities.

25:33.720 --> 25:39.040
So here's an example of what happened in Wodonga, Victoria, rural Victoria.

25:39.040 --> 25:42.320
This church, there were some members of the church who wanted to start up a community

25:42.320 --> 25:45.200
garden on this big piece of grass here.

25:45.200 --> 25:48.220
So they're trying to figure out how do we build the raised beds?

25:48.220 --> 25:52.040
So they turned to one of the voluntary associations, which is the Men's Shed.

25:52.040 --> 25:57.520
They've got these Men's Sheds all over Australia where men come together, retired men, and

25:57.520 --> 26:02.600
they have power tools, and they get together and they make things out of wood for the benefit

26:02.600 --> 26:03.600
of the community.

26:03.600 --> 26:05.880
They make children's toys, they renovate facilities.

26:05.880 --> 26:10.960
But it's a great way for these men to support each other, to talk about health issues, to

26:10.960 --> 26:16.960
get a little time away from their wives, to mentor young guys who are in trouble and helping

26:16.960 --> 26:21.760
them learn how to do woodworking, but in the process, being life coaches to them as well.

26:21.760 --> 26:22.760
Incredibly powerful.

26:22.760 --> 26:29.000
Anyhow, these men built the raised beds for the garden.

26:29.000 --> 26:32.600
And then they worked with mutual assistance association, the new immigrants and refugees

26:32.600 --> 26:33.720
who had come into the community.

26:33.720 --> 26:39.120
They got involved in the garden because they were eager to grow produce that they were

26:39.120 --> 26:40.520
used to.

26:40.520 --> 26:44.520
And there was an organization of elders in the community who got involved and figured

26:44.520 --> 26:48.460
they could do things, even if it was just watering the garden.

26:48.460 --> 26:50.920
And the crops started to grow.

26:50.920 --> 26:53.300
Turned out the church had a commercial kitchen.

26:53.300 --> 26:57.520
So they started harvesting this food and they recruited people to help prepare this food.

26:57.520 --> 27:03.360
The local nutritionists offered her services and they started cooking gourmet meals.

27:03.360 --> 27:04.640
But they again involved everybody.

27:04.640 --> 27:10.120
They involved the high school club that got involved in this, another voluntary association.

27:10.120 --> 27:14.400
And they involved an organization of people with intellectual disabilities.

27:14.400 --> 27:15.400
They are so proud.

27:15.400 --> 27:17.120
Here they are cooking the pasta.

27:17.120 --> 27:20.800
So proud to be the cooks for the community, the chefs for the community, to be able to

27:20.800 --> 27:23.960
contribute to the community, not just be seen as clients.

27:23.960 --> 27:25.840
And here they are packaging the foods.

27:25.840 --> 27:30.720
And they serve thousands and thousands of gourmet, nutritious foods to people who would

27:30.720 --> 27:33.320
otherwise have no food at all.

27:33.320 --> 27:37.080
And it's possible because they reached out and involved all the different ways people

27:37.080 --> 27:39.520
organized in their community.

27:39.520 --> 27:44.400
A third asset that every community has is the build environment.

27:44.400 --> 27:49.360
This is a picture of Mountain View Presbyterian Church in White Center.

27:49.360 --> 27:51.680
This is a church that has a small congregation.

27:51.680 --> 27:54.120
The church was really falling apart.

27:54.120 --> 27:56.640
But they used their facility to help support the community.

27:56.640 --> 27:59.800
There's an elementary school across the street, so they started a before and after school

27:59.800 --> 28:00.800
program.

28:00.800 --> 28:03.320
But their facility was really having problems.

28:03.320 --> 28:06.440
So some of the people were active from the community and said, we'd like to help you

28:06.440 --> 28:08.600
rebuild your church.

28:08.600 --> 28:12.560
And even though this was a very small congregation, they had so many connections in their community

28:12.560 --> 28:17.120
and with their sister church, which is University Presbyterian, they used all those connections

28:17.120 --> 28:20.480
to organize an extreme makeover of their church.

28:20.480 --> 28:23.120
One thousand volunteers got involved.

28:23.120 --> 28:27.360
And over three weekends, they totally rebuilt that church.

28:27.360 --> 28:29.880
And they put in new facilities for the community.

28:29.880 --> 28:34.560
It was a four and a half million dollar project they did for a million and a half because

28:34.560 --> 28:39.520
all of the skills were volunteered by community members.

28:39.520 --> 28:41.640
The local labor unions got involved.

28:41.640 --> 28:44.440
They worked through all the different associations in the community.

28:44.440 --> 28:47.800
Here they are tearing out the – this space was just terrible.

28:47.800 --> 28:50.480
This is where the before and after school program was.

28:50.480 --> 28:52.360
Here's what it looked like afterwards.

28:52.360 --> 28:53.960
This is what their kitchen looked like before.

28:53.960 --> 28:56.560
This is what it looked like afterwards.

28:56.560 --> 29:00.480
And then they re-landscaped the area around the church.

29:00.480 --> 29:05.040
A local artist contributed new stained glass windows throughout the church.

29:05.040 --> 29:09.720
And a neighbor across the street took the old stained glass and created a cross for

29:09.720 --> 29:10.720
that church.

29:10.720 --> 29:11.720
Incredibly powerful.

29:11.720 --> 29:15.960
And we take those underutilized assets in our community and mobilize them.

29:15.960 --> 29:16.960
I know of other churches.

29:16.960 --> 29:20.840
I know of one in Indianapolis in a really poor neighborhood where the church was surrounded

29:20.840 --> 29:23.440
by boarded up houses, foreclosed houses.

29:23.440 --> 29:27.600
And they started buying up these houses and members of the church worked to rehab these

29:27.600 --> 29:32.240
houses both for church members to start moving back into the neighborhood and for other neighbors

29:32.240 --> 29:34.680
to have a home ownership.

29:34.680 --> 29:35.680
Incredible.

29:35.680 --> 29:39.120
Underutilized assets in our communities.

29:39.120 --> 29:40.240
The natural environment.

29:40.240 --> 29:43.480
I was in Leaton, New South Wales in Australia.

29:43.480 --> 29:47.600
And there the Uniting Church took the initiative and said, you know, we've got so much produce

29:47.600 --> 29:52.560
that's just sitting in our fields and rotting because our supermarkets have standards where

29:52.560 --> 29:54.000
the fruit has to be a particular color.

29:54.000 --> 29:55.360
It has to be a particular firmness.

29:55.360 --> 29:57.680
It has to be a particular size.

29:57.680 --> 30:02.320
And so volunteers from the churches, from the congregations go out and glean the fields.

30:02.320 --> 30:06.260
And they're sending thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds to the food banks

30:06.260 --> 30:09.200
in Sydney every year.

30:09.200 --> 30:13.220
Onions and watermelon, oranges.

30:13.220 --> 30:16.640
And the local economy is another real strength of every neighborhood.

30:16.640 --> 30:21.040
This is a church called Sacred Heart in Minneapolis.

30:21.040 --> 30:22.120
They worked very hard.

30:22.120 --> 30:26.120
They were part of an Alinsky-style organizing effort to get the police to be more responsive,

30:26.120 --> 30:29.520
to help clean up the streets because most of the businesses were shut down.

30:29.520 --> 30:32.280
They were boarded up because of high crime in that neighborhood.

30:32.280 --> 30:36.760
But they said, this neighborhood is never going to get better unless we can revitalize

30:36.760 --> 30:38.160
the economy.

30:38.160 --> 30:43.120
So they did an asset inventory in their church and all Latino congregations and found people

30:43.120 --> 30:46.120
who used to have businesses in Mexico.

30:46.120 --> 30:48.840
People who still had businesses that were operating out of their basement or out of

30:48.840 --> 30:49.960
their garage.

30:49.960 --> 30:52.880
People wanted to start a business because they made really good tamales and they had

30:52.880 --> 30:54.200
a good craft.

30:54.200 --> 30:55.200
So they formed a co-op.

30:55.200 --> 30:59.680
And you could join the co-op if you put in $1,000 and if you went through a business

30:59.680 --> 31:02.160
training class, it was offered for free.

31:02.160 --> 31:06.680
And they used their money to renovate this boarded up building as a Mercado Central.

31:06.680 --> 31:09.080
And they create small incubator businesses inside.

31:09.080 --> 31:12.600
Jose on the right-hand side was a dishwasher at the time.

31:12.600 --> 31:17.000
But he was elected president of the board of the co-op.

31:17.000 --> 31:18.720
But he made really good tamales.

31:18.720 --> 31:23.120
So he started up a tamaling coffee shop and somebody else put in Mexican clothing.

31:23.120 --> 31:28.240
And there were cafes and there's a grocery store and there's bakery and there's smoothies

31:28.240 --> 31:29.920
and there's also a cultural center.

31:29.920 --> 31:32.120
So when I was there, they're celebrating the Day of the Dead.

31:32.120 --> 31:34.240
But it's been incredibly successful.

31:34.240 --> 31:39.480
Jose now has, he has three tamaling coffee shops on Lake Street.

31:39.480 --> 31:43.040
He's got 27 employees, $2 million a year in sales.

31:43.040 --> 31:45.160
They're able to do joint accounting, joint marketing.

31:45.160 --> 31:46.520
So they've been incredibly successful.

31:46.520 --> 31:50.280
The small-eyed community heard about this and said, we want to start up our own businesses.

31:50.280 --> 31:54.220
So they started up incubator businesses in an old bakery.

31:54.220 --> 31:58.240
And then there was a Collins building, which is the former hospital.

31:58.240 --> 32:01.840
And in there, they create small incubator businesses from absolutely all over the world

32:01.840 --> 32:04.000
called the world market.

32:04.000 --> 32:05.720
Because it's a very multicultural community.

32:05.720 --> 32:10.120
So they're building on their strengths to rebuild their economy from the bottom up.

32:10.120 --> 32:13.640
Rather than just giving tax incentives to major corporations, rather than bringing in

32:13.640 --> 32:16.820
the big box retail, rather than bringing in chain stores.

32:16.820 --> 32:20.160
It's about how do we build on the strengths of our community?

32:20.160 --> 32:22.520
How do we get people to shop locally?

32:22.520 --> 32:24.660
How do we get people to reinvest locally?

32:24.660 --> 32:26.840
How do we build our economy from the bottom up?

32:26.840 --> 32:29.440
Finally, every community has local agencies.

32:29.440 --> 32:32.920
And agencies have incredible contributions they can make, whether it's nonprofits or

32:32.920 --> 32:33.920
government.

32:33.920 --> 32:37.680
If they're going to really partner with communities, they need to make a major paradigm shift in

32:37.680 --> 32:39.640
the way they do their work.

32:39.640 --> 32:44.080
Because in many ways, some of our agencies are contributing to the breakdown of our communities

32:44.080 --> 32:47.400
in a top-down kind of way, in a siloed kind of way.

32:47.400 --> 32:51.560
Because they just focus on needs and not also on the strengths of the community.

32:51.560 --> 32:56.000
So if agencies are going to partner with communities, need to move away from discrete functions

32:56.000 --> 33:02.180
to focusing on whole places, on whole communities, more holistic approaches, moving from needs

33:02.180 --> 33:05.480
to strengths and from top-down to bottom-up.

33:05.480 --> 33:10.600
So just one quick last story from Neighborhood House at High Point.

33:10.600 --> 33:14.840
Neighborhood House got a grant to create a healthy community in High Point.

33:14.840 --> 33:17.040
Had a hard time getting people interested.

33:17.040 --> 33:21.000
It was the agency's agenda and not the community's.

33:21.000 --> 33:23.120
So they said, what would you as a community be interested in?

33:23.120 --> 33:26.740
They said, we just want to create an awesome High Point community.

33:26.740 --> 33:31.160
So they said, OK, we'll pay for meals if everybody will help us cook the meals, because

33:31.160 --> 33:35.720
we just have enough money for the food, not for the ingredients, not to cook it.

33:35.720 --> 33:38.680
So all the members of the community created their own dishes.

33:38.680 --> 33:45.320
And it was this incredible multicultural feast that could only be produced out of that community.

33:45.320 --> 33:48.440
And then the community said, we can get people here to our event.

33:48.440 --> 33:52.240
They wanted to have a big gathering to tap people's ideas, rather than just relying

33:52.240 --> 33:54.720
on the agencies for all the solutions.

33:54.720 --> 33:55.720
What would get people there?

33:55.720 --> 33:58.400
They said, well, if we had some entertainment, it would get people there.

33:58.400 --> 34:02.520
So there was a group in the community that volunteered to provide entertainment.

34:02.520 --> 34:07.080
And it was the senior line dance group, where some of them actually showed up with walkers.

34:07.080 --> 34:10.600
But they were so popular, the kids jumped up and joined them and said, could we do this

34:10.600 --> 34:12.560
with you every month?

34:12.560 --> 34:16.040
And then we had people sit around tables and create visions about what would an awesome

34:16.040 --> 34:18.160
High Point community look like?

34:18.160 --> 34:21.840
And then we told people, if you have an idea you're particularly passionate about, stand

34:21.840 --> 34:24.920
up and champion it and see who joins you.

34:24.920 --> 34:29.080
And so people stood up one at a time, this woman said, young woman said, Chinese woman

34:29.080 --> 34:31.320
said, I want to start up a tea house.

34:31.320 --> 34:33.400
So we have a gathering place in our community.

34:33.400 --> 34:38.280
There were some Somali elders in the corner and said, we don't drink tea, we drink coffee.

34:38.280 --> 34:42.200
So they got together and started talking about a tea and coffee shop.

34:42.200 --> 34:46.920
This man said, I'll lead exercise classes if people help me organize those.

34:46.920 --> 34:51.720
This young woman said, I want to start up a, I've always wanted to play soccer.

34:51.720 --> 34:54.280
But because of my religion, we can't play outdoor soccer.

34:54.280 --> 34:56.000
I want to start up an indoor soccer league.

34:56.000 --> 34:58.400
So a group started organizing around that.

34:58.400 --> 35:01.280
This woman said, we made this incredible multicultural feast tonight.

35:01.280 --> 35:04.560
That's an incredible gift that we have that no other community could reproduce.

35:04.560 --> 35:07.560
Let's start up a multi-ethnic catering company.

35:07.560 --> 35:10.640
This young man, Solomon, was the most moving of all.

35:10.640 --> 35:13.760
Solomon stood up and said, you know, all my friends in other neighborhoods have parks,

35:13.760 --> 35:14.760
they have swing sets.

35:14.760 --> 35:16.880
I want a swing set.

35:16.880 --> 35:18.520
He just tugged at everybody's heartstrings.

35:18.520 --> 35:20.240
He was the most articulate.

35:20.240 --> 35:24.200
And there were some elders in the corner who said, you know, we walk, we do regular exercises.

35:24.200 --> 35:26.920
We walk for exercise every morning.

35:26.920 --> 35:27.920
And we get tired.

35:27.920 --> 35:28.920
We, we like to have a bench.

35:28.920 --> 35:33.440
How about if we create a park with a bench and swing sets?

35:33.440 --> 35:35.640
This was last January.

35:35.640 --> 35:41.040
A month ago, the neighbors came together to build that park.

35:41.040 --> 35:44.040
Here's the bench.

35:44.040 --> 35:47.440
And here's Solomon in his new swing set.

35:47.440 --> 35:48.680
And I just keep hearing more stories.

35:48.680 --> 35:53.280
There was a group of older women who came together in this low-income housing development

35:53.280 --> 35:56.720
and said, we want to teach each other how to do craft work.

35:56.720 --> 35:59.480
There's somebody there who did really good knitting and crocheting.

35:59.480 --> 36:01.960
She called me the other day and said, we are so proud.

36:01.960 --> 36:07.760
We're just shipping sweaters like crazy to Nicholsville for homeless people.

36:07.760 --> 36:11.880
Always thinking about who's worse off than themselves.

36:11.880 --> 36:13.500
That to me is community.

36:13.500 --> 36:18.480
So I've got a lot more stuff that I'm going to stop so we can take some questions and

36:18.480 --> 36:19.480
look forward to the dialogue.

36:19.480 --> 36:22.480
And if people want to stick around later, I'll show you more pictures.

36:22.480 --> 36:31.200
What do you think in Seattle today a faith-based replacement needs to do?

36:31.200 --> 36:32.960
What could we do?

36:32.960 --> 36:35.360
Well you're doing a lot already.

36:35.360 --> 36:39.560
I'm actually working with Associated Ministries in Pierce County.

36:39.560 --> 36:45.360
And we're pulling together an event in, when is that, I think it's next month.

36:45.360 --> 36:47.480
And they're concerned about poverty.

36:47.480 --> 36:52.080
And they've been, as a church, a lot of churches working and writing letters to congressmen

36:52.080 --> 36:53.920
and doing kind of the traditional things.

36:53.920 --> 36:58.840
But what we're going to do is organize a session, a workshop, and talk about asset-based approaches

36:58.840 --> 37:01.320
to dealing with poverty.

37:01.320 --> 37:04.400
And do open space, kind of like you did at High Point.

37:04.400 --> 37:07.120
And have people just stand up and say, here's a project I want to work on.

37:07.120 --> 37:10.240
You know, it might be about time sharing.

37:10.240 --> 37:13.560
That's a huge effort right now about how can people get their needs met outside of the

37:13.560 --> 37:15.060
formal economy.

37:15.060 --> 37:18.780
Or it might be about working on a living wage campaign, whatever it is.

37:18.780 --> 37:21.760
But really have the members themselves say, here's something we want to work on.

37:21.760 --> 37:24.360
Here's how we can contribute our gifts.

37:24.360 --> 37:30.160
And it's about, I think, Plymouth does a fantastic job of kind of supporting services in our

37:30.160 --> 37:31.160
community.

37:31.160 --> 37:34.720
But also, how do we start recognizing people as more than clients?

37:34.720 --> 37:36.680
And how do we start bringing them into our community?

37:36.680 --> 37:39.000
There's a great project in Ames, Iowa.

37:39.000 --> 37:42.560
I figured you could relate to that.

37:42.560 --> 37:45.540
And it's called Beyond Poverty.

37:45.540 --> 37:50.320
And what they recognize is that absolutely everybody's got poverty in their lives.

37:50.320 --> 37:52.320
For some people, it's a lack of money.

37:52.320 --> 37:56.580
For some people, poverty is a lack of meaning and relationships.

37:56.580 --> 38:00.520
And a lot of the people with the most money have the least meaning and relationships in

38:00.520 --> 38:01.720
their lives.

38:01.720 --> 38:08.240
So they bring people together across class to help each other with their poverty.

38:08.240 --> 38:11.760
So it's about kind of thinking a new way, thinking about those untapped resources that

38:11.760 --> 38:12.760
are in our community.

38:12.760 --> 38:15.760
Because I think everybody's probably already giving as much as they can financially.

38:15.760 --> 38:17.760
OK, next question.

38:17.760 --> 38:24.760
How do you overcome the naysayers in the group that say, we're too old, we're too young,

38:24.760 --> 38:26.760
we're too small?

38:26.760 --> 38:27.760
Right.

38:27.760 --> 38:28.760
Yeah.

38:28.760 --> 38:31.280
I have a friend who's a fellow activist.

38:31.280 --> 38:34.600
He used to be an organizer in the Philippines, and now he's an organizer in Calgary.

38:34.600 --> 38:41.520
He says, Jim, you know, the problem getting people engaged in community is those GD activists.

38:41.520 --> 38:42.520
And I said, what do you mean GD?

38:42.520 --> 38:47.160
And he said, the grim and determined.

38:47.160 --> 38:51.480
And it cracked me up because it describes so many people I know who are always so negative.

38:51.480 --> 38:55.120
And they tend to be a lot of our communicators, and they drive everybody away.

38:55.120 --> 38:57.160
They're just always complaining.

38:57.160 --> 39:00.100
And there's a certain number of people who go with that negativity.

39:00.100 --> 39:02.140
But most people go with hope.

39:02.140 --> 39:04.720
So I think it's about how do you bring people together?

39:04.720 --> 39:07.680
Sometimes that's why with the matching fund, we allow people to create their own groups

39:07.680 --> 39:08.680
to do a project.

39:08.680 --> 39:13.480
So you don't have to go through those gatekeepers that are such a pain sometimes.

39:13.480 --> 39:18.000
But it's about using new kind of calls to people.

39:18.000 --> 39:20.120
I have a friend who's a duck hunter.

39:20.120 --> 39:22.960
He taught me that every duck will respond to a call.

39:22.960 --> 39:25.520
Just there's a different call for every duck, right?

39:25.520 --> 39:29.280
And he says, too often times, all we do is we sound the loon call, and we wonder why

39:29.280 --> 39:33.820
only the loons come to our meetings, right?

39:33.820 --> 39:36.720
And he says, that's the first problem is we start with the meetings.

39:36.720 --> 39:40.040
I have a friend who says, why have a meeting when you can have a party?

39:40.040 --> 39:41.400
Right?

39:41.400 --> 39:42.400
Think about it.

39:42.400 --> 39:43.400
The purpose isn't who can endure the most.

39:43.400 --> 39:44.400
The purpose is to go suffering.

39:44.400 --> 39:45.400
Right?

39:45.400 --> 39:48.040
The purpose is to build relationships.

39:48.040 --> 39:51.000
And you can do that a lot more through fun, through social activities.

39:51.000 --> 39:55.160
So the more calls you have, if you have a social call, that's a very legitimate call.

39:55.160 --> 39:58.960
Or the project call, because unlike with meetings, there's always a result.

39:58.960 --> 39:59.960
There's a beginning and an end.

39:59.960 --> 40:04.160
There's a role for everybody, for young people, for elders, people with disabilities.

40:04.160 --> 40:05.520
The purpose is to build relationships.

40:05.520 --> 40:09.360
And once people start to build relationships, then they're more likely to get involved in

40:09.360 --> 40:10.360
meetings.

40:10.360 --> 40:13.080
I think the other thing is people are feeling really powerless these days.

40:13.080 --> 40:16.920
They feel like they've been involved a lot and nothing ever changes, nothing ever happens.

40:16.920 --> 40:20.360
So one of the things Olensky really taught about is working on, immediately, issues that

40:20.360 --> 40:24.720
are immediate, concrete, and realizable, or projects that are immediate, concrete, and

40:24.720 --> 40:27.700
realizable, where people can see results.

40:27.700 --> 40:31.000
Because if people just feel like it's, you know, so you probably don't want to start

40:31.000 --> 40:35.920
with rural peace or climate change, because it's hard to see results.

40:35.920 --> 40:38.000
Doesn't mean we shouldn't work on those issues.

40:38.000 --> 40:40.680
But people are never going to work on those big issues if they don't think they can even

40:40.680 --> 40:42.440
make change on their own block.

40:42.440 --> 40:43.440
Right?

40:43.440 --> 40:46.760
People need to get a sense that by working collectively, they can make change.

40:46.760 --> 40:49.560
And then they'll be more ready to tackle the larger issues.

40:49.560 --> 40:52.880
Well, I could talk about that one for a long time.

40:52.880 --> 40:59.960
Sound Alliance is a, came out of the Industrial Areas Foundation, which was the organization

40:59.960 --> 41:02.360
that was created by Olensky way back.

41:02.360 --> 41:06.000
But it's, organizing's really changed over the last, you know, it's evolved.

41:06.000 --> 41:08.640
Olensky died in 72.

41:08.640 --> 41:13.040
And he really organized, he really focused on organizing people around their self-interest.

41:13.040 --> 41:16.680
And now community organizing's much more about organizing around people's values.

41:16.680 --> 41:21.080
It's about organizing around relationships, which are also great ways to get people engaged.

41:21.080 --> 41:27.240
So what they do is bring in institutions, largely faith-based organizations, synagogues

41:27.240 --> 41:32.720
and churches, and labor unions, you know, key organizations.

41:32.720 --> 41:37.320
And they, and they start off by doing what they call a listening campaign within the

41:37.320 --> 41:41.880
churches, just to get people to really build strong relationships with each other, to tell

41:41.880 --> 41:47.120
their stories, find out what their gifts are, what their hopes and fears are for their community.

41:47.120 --> 41:50.800
And then they bring people together to start identifying what are some common issues that

41:50.800 --> 41:54.400
we have in common that we'd like to work on as a, as a, as a community.

41:54.400 --> 41:57.240
So they're working on issues like foreclosure now.

41:57.240 --> 42:03.880
They're working on issues like green jobs and training people within their congregations

42:03.880 --> 42:06.080
about how to get those jobs.

42:06.080 --> 42:07.800
So it's a very powerful organization.

42:07.800 --> 42:10.560
It's been around probably five or six years.

42:10.560 --> 42:12.840
But I'd really encourage you to check it out.

42:12.840 --> 42:21.040
I wonder if you'd be willing to comment on community organizers and their value with

42:21.040 --> 42:24.120
respect to what the city of Michigan says.

42:24.120 --> 42:25.120
Yeah.

42:25.120 --> 42:31.480
Well, it, his comments really seem strange to me in that, as I said before, and I believe

42:31.480 --> 42:32.640
it, I think there's two kinds of power.

42:32.640 --> 42:36.040
I think there's the power of money and there's the power of people.

42:36.040 --> 42:39.680
And money tends to be organized as corporations and PACs.

42:39.680 --> 42:42.320
And people are organized as communities.

42:42.320 --> 42:49.280
So if you really believe in democracy, if you really believe in, you know, in strong

42:49.280 --> 42:53.240
communities, you gotta believe in community organizing, right?

42:53.240 --> 43:00.920
What's, what's funny to me is I don't think that community organizing, I don't know why

43:00.920 --> 43:05.440
it's not a conservative value as well as progressive value.

43:05.440 --> 43:08.120
In fact, I'm doing a lot of work with the UK.

43:08.120 --> 43:12.040
I gave two talks in number 10 Downing Street over the last year.

43:12.040 --> 43:18.440
They are hiring 5,000, they are training 5,000 community organizers across the country.

43:18.440 --> 43:22.960
This is the Tories because they have no money.

43:22.960 --> 43:27.000
Because government has less money and they say, we've got this great untapped strength

43:27.000 --> 43:28.640
in our communities.

43:28.640 --> 43:32.560
And they're replicating Seattle's matching fund program across the country with 120 million

43:32.560 --> 43:36.760
pounds because they don't have money.

43:36.760 --> 43:41.160
So I don't, I don't think, I hate to see this stuff get polarized because I think community,

43:41.160 --> 43:45.640
I think that's one of the, you know, I have my own politics, but that's, I think that's

43:45.640 --> 43:49.720
one of the strengths of community is I think that really is the potential to span across

43:49.720 --> 43:55.400
those divides that we've created, the partisan divides, because community shouldn't be partisan.

43:55.400 --> 43:56.400
Community is where it all comes together.

43:56.400 --> 43:58.760
It should be something everybody believes in.

43:58.760 --> 44:04.000
So it's really mysterious to me that people are mining community organizing and praising

44:04.000 --> 44:05.000
the corporations.

44:05.000 --> 44:15.440
Okay, so it occurs to me that, you know, like what you're doing is a little bit subversive.

44:15.440 --> 44:20.440
And you know, you seem like it's, you know, like not a flaming radical or anything, but

44:20.440 --> 44:28.320
it is kind of subversive in my opinion because, well, let me give you a couple examples, like

44:28.320 --> 44:35.320
what happened to the Inuits in Canada, you know, is that, you know, they got television

44:35.320 --> 44:40.920
in their, into their villages and within about four years, their whole community had disintegrated

44:40.920 --> 44:44.020
and their kids were sniffing glue and everything.

44:44.020 --> 44:48.760
And you know, and then I think of the movie network, you know, like, you know, how they,

44:48.760 --> 44:53.200
you know, they, at one point the guy, you know, he says, go to your window, you know,

44:53.200 --> 44:56.920
and go scream out there, you know, I'm fed up and I'm not going to take it anymore.

44:56.920 --> 44:57.920
Right.

44:57.920 --> 44:58.920
Mad as hell.

44:58.920 --> 44:59.920
Yeah, I'm mad as hell.

44:59.920 --> 45:00.920
I'm not going to take it anymore.

45:00.920 --> 45:03.120
And it's like, you know, people don't know what to do.

45:03.120 --> 45:07.440
Like, as if that would change anything if you went and screamed out the window or something,

45:07.440 --> 45:08.440
you know.

45:08.440 --> 45:14.360
And so I think that you were talking about how that there's two kinds of power, you know,

45:14.360 --> 45:16.320
there's money power and there's community power.

45:16.320 --> 45:20.000
And I think that the powers that be know this, you know.

45:20.000 --> 45:25.400
So do you have any thoughts on this you want to elaborate on?

45:25.400 --> 45:31.760
I don't know what I can elaborate on beyond what I've said.

45:31.760 --> 45:34.600
I think, yeah, I think it's subversive.

45:34.600 --> 45:41.720
I also, I also think that there are people who are in power who are recognizing that

45:41.720 --> 45:46.280
there could be some advantages in partnering with communities that at a time where we have

45:46.280 --> 45:50.120
fewer resources that there are, and also that there's a lot of things that institutions

45:50.120 --> 45:52.200
don't do as well as communities.

45:52.200 --> 45:54.640
The communities do best.

45:54.640 --> 46:01.720
So it's, yeah, it's subversive, but it also could be a way for it to create more partnerships

46:01.720 --> 46:05.880
between institutions and communities.

46:05.880 --> 46:10.000
And another thing I was thinking about, you know, you're talking about agencies, you know,

46:10.000 --> 46:17.760
how that they, you know, look at people by needs instead of, you know, assets, you know.

46:17.760 --> 46:22.800
And so I'm sort of wondering, you know, over the years, if you've seen any change in how

46:22.800 --> 46:29.800
that, say, for instance, the city council reacts to you and to the neighborhood groups,

46:29.800 --> 46:32.960
you know, as to how that they might have reacted before.

46:32.960 --> 46:35.480
Well, I don't know about the city council.

46:35.480 --> 46:40.240
I think it has been a trend where we've got, you know, institutions have grown larger and

46:40.240 --> 46:43.920
larger, larger government, larger, more and more nonprofit organizations.

46:43.920 --> 46:49.680
And that has contributed to this trend of kind of focusing on needs, of siloing people.

46:49.680 --> 46:52.960
And I'm not one of those people who thinks we need smaller government or we need fewer

46:52.960 --> 46:53.960
nonprofits.

46:53.960 --> 46:58.440
It's more, the message is more about how do we get government and nonprofits to focus

46:58.440 --> 47:00.080
on what they do best?

47:00.080 --> 47:02.840
Because there is clearly a need for government and nonprofit organizations.

47:02.840 --> 47:07.360
There are things communities don't do so well that government and nonprofits need to step

47:07.360 --> 47:08.360
up and do.

47:08.360 --> 47:11.360
But how do they use the rest of their capacity to really help communities rebuild their own

47:11.360 --> 47:14.040
capacity to do what communities do best?

47:14.040 --> 47:19.240
And how do we create better partnerships between government and nonprofits and communities

47:19.240 --> 47:24.640
by focusing on strengths, by doing work more bottom-up rather than agencies always driving

47:24.640 --> 47:25.920
the agendas?

47:25.920 --> 47:29.720
And how do we do it in a less siloed way, in a more holistic community-based kind of

47:29.720 --> 47:30.720
way?

47:30.720 --> 47:34.760
And I think there's a lot of opportunity to move in that direction.

47:34.760 --> 47:38.480
It's really tough to move in that direction because all of our systems are set up the

47:38.480 --> 47:39.800
other way.

47:39.800 --> 47:45.560
Every one of our institutions is set up by silos from the university on up.

47:45.560 --> 47:50.240
And our grants are all set up that way so that you can never get a grant by saying we

47:50.240 --> 47:52.360
have a great community with lots of strengths.

47:52.360 --> 47:56.840
You get grants by saying how terrible your community is and how many needs you have.

47:56.840 --> 48:00.960
And with grants you often have to focus on what the objectives are before you've consulted

48:00.960 --> 48:04.400
the community, which again is at least a top-down anti-community approach.

48:04.400 --> 48:06.600
So all our systems are set up to be anti-community.

48:06.600 --> 48:12.360
I think in terms of council, in terms of government, it's really interesting.

48:12.360 --> 48:15.520
I think it sort of depends who's in office.

48:15.520 --> 48:19.280
There are some governments now who are waking up and saying, hey, we've got to do our work

48:19.280 --> 48:23.720
in a very different way because of the economic crisis, because we don't have the resources.

48:23.720 --> 48:28.720
And they're recognizing how many resources the community can bring and how important

48:28.720 --> 48:36.040
it is to kind of make democracy work again, that it's a crisis when people are thinking

48:36.040 --> 48:38.760
of themselves as taxpayers rather than as citizens.

48:38.760 --> 48:43.640
And so there are so many places around the world now, from Brazil that's doing participatory

48:43.640 --> 48:50.760
budgeting processes to the effort to hire community organizers in the UK to bottom-up

48:50.760 --> 48:55.480
planning in many places in Australia, where people are doing work in a new way because

48:55.480 --> 48:59.480
of the economic crisis, and it's waking government officials up.

48:59.480 --> 49:03.800
Unfortunately, there are also places like Seattle that are actually retrenching on our

49:03.800 --> 49:09.440
community work and using the economic crisis as an excuse, saying we have to get back to

49:09.440 --> 49:10.440
basics.

49:10.440 --> 49:14.040
Now, because of the bad economy, we just have to do what's most important, and that's

49:14.040 --> 49:18.440
paving our roads and taking care of our physical infrastructure and hiring more police.

49:18.440 --> 49:20.280
And they've forgotten about community.

49:20.280 --> 49:25.320
They think community is sort of this fluffy thing that we can do when times are good,

49:25.320 --> 49:28.120
but we really can't afford it in tough times.

49:28.120 --> 49:31.960
And there's absolutely nothing more important right now than community, because that's

49:31.960 --> 49:34.680
where our untapped resources are.

49:34.680 --> 49:38.600
And it's a huge mistake for government to just think of its function as taking care

49:38.600 --> 49:40.560
of the physical infrastructure.

49:40.560 --> 49:45.380
Government also needs to be responsible for taking care of the foundation of our democracy,

49:45.380 --> 49:47.720
and there isn't enough attention to that.

49:47.720 --> 49:50.400
But many places are waking up and starting to move in a different direction.

49:50.400 --> 49:53.760
I'm afraid Seattle doesn't quite get it yet.

49:53.760 --> 49:58.640
That's kind of funny, because we pride ourselves that we have such a progressive city council.

49:58.640 --> 50:04.160
We've got people on the city council that ran with green endorsements and everything,

50:04.160 --> 50:10.400
and that come from the environmental community, for instance.

50:10.400 --> 50:13.680
But you would think that they would get that.

50:13.680 --> 50:16.880
What's interesting to me is I don't think community is necessarily a progressive value

50:16.880 --> 50:19.280
or a conservative value.

50:19.280 --> 50:28.520
And it really frustrates me as progressive to see so many progressives trying to do things,

50:28.520 --> 50:32.960
trying to push their own agendas, and not trusting democracy, not really trusting the

50:32.960 --> 50:37.640
people, trying to figure out how do we get more density over on the people this time,

50:37.640 --> 50:38.760
for example.

50:38.760 --> 50:42.920
When we trusted people and did bottom-up planning, community groups all voted for more density

50:42.920 --> 50:45.920
because they were able to shape density in a way that may work for them.

50:45.920 --> 50:50.640
Whenever we try to impose solutions from the top down, no matter how progressive, it doesn't

50:50.640 --> 50:51.640
work.

50:51.640 --> 50:53.320
We've got to get back to democracy.

50:53.320 --> 50:57.880
We've got to get back to more community-oriented kind of work.

50:57.880 --> 51:05.360
This is an interesting point, because you hear conservatives always railing against

51:05.360 --> 51:06.360
big government.

51:06.360 --> 51:14.000
They think that, well, they are always talking about how we should get the church to provide

51:14.000 --> 51:19.280
aid to people if they're starving or whatever, which is totally ludicrous.

51:19.280 --> 51:29.640
But the thing is that they have a good point, because they understand that really community

51:29.640 --> 51:33.280
is a big part of happiness.

51:33.280 --> 51:39.480
I think both the conservatives and progressives have some good points and some terrible points

51:39.480 --> 51:40.480
they're making.

51:40.480 --> 51:44.480
For conservatives, the good point is, yes, people need to take some more responsibility.

51:44.480 --> 51:49.040
I think that was part of Barack Obama's appeal when he ran for president, was that he said

51:49.040 --> 51:53.920
people need to step up and take a lot more responsibility.

51:53.920 --> 51:57.720
But at the same time, he said, we also need social justice, and that's what the conservatives

51:57.720 --> 51:58.720
miss out on.

51:58.720 --> 52:03.520
There's clearly a role for government and for progressives in ensuring that people's

52:03.520 --> 52:07.520
basic needs get met, that nobody falls through the cracks.

52:07.520 --> 52:12.000
But at the same time, we also need to think about how do we rebuild community and help

52:12.000 --> 52:14.040
communities do what they do best.

52:14.040 --> 52:21.960
So I get concerned that people take such ideological positions and miss out on the real potential

52:21.960 --> 52:26.040
for change, which I think is in communities.

52:26.040 --> 52:29.480
And another thing you touched on was the lack of democracy.

52:29.480 --> 52:37.720
And a while back, I had a conversation with one of my friends, and we were talking about

52:37.720 --> 52:44.520
on a local level, like here in Seattle, how we voted for the monorail two or three times,

52:44.520 --> 52:52.040
we didn't get it, how that we voted against the tunnel two or three times, and they won,

52:52.040 --> 52:56.200
how that everybody pretty much was against the stadium, but they crammed that down our

52:56.200 --> 52:57.200
throats.

52:57.200 --> 53:01.400
And it's like, I could see why people don't want to participate.

53:01.400 --> 53:02.400
That's right.

53:02.400 --> 53:03.400
That's right.

53:03.400 --> 53:08.560
Yeah, I often argue that before government starts partnering with communities, it needs

53:08.560 --> 53:12.600
to remove some of the obstacles and start doing no harm.

53:12.600 --> 53:18.240
In many ways, a lot of the reasons we have had a breakdown in community is because people

53:18.240 --> 53:21.920
have participated a lot and they haven't seen any results from their participation.

53:21.920 --> 53:27.520
So they've learned through their participation with government not to be involved, right?

53:27.520 --> 53:29.760
They've learned the wrong lessons.

53:29.760 --> 53:32.760
And it's really tough to be involved with government because in the city of Seattle,

53:32.760 --> 53:36.120
there's 32 different departments, and each department's focused on its own agenda, pushing

53:36.120 --> 53:37.120
its own agenda.

53:37.120 --> 53:39.120
And it's in community that things come together.

53:39.120 --> 53:41.920
There are enough nights in the year to go to all those meetings, right?

53:41.920 --> 53:43.640
And it's not how people experience community.

53:43.640 --> 53:44.640
They don't experience them in silos.

53:44.640 --> 53:48.920
They experience them where they all come together in their neighborhoods, in their community.

53:48.920 --> 53:55.600
So government often complains about they just hear from the few people over and over.

53:55.600 --> 53:58.240
They often talk about them as the usual suspects.

53:58.240 --> 54:02.320
But in many ways, those usual suspects are created by government because the process

54:02.320 --> 54:05.280
is to reinforce those few individuals.

54:05.280 --> 54:09.560
And if government is really serious about creating a democracy, it needs to be much

54:09.560 --> 54:13.480
more serious about empowering communities, about getting resources, about allowing more

54:13.480 --> 54:20.360
bottom-up decision-making, and about using other tools and meetings to get people engaged.

54:20.360 --> 54:25.640
You know, I sort of don't think government really is interested in creating democracy

54:25.640 --> 54:27.080
very much these days.

54:27.080 --> 54:28.600
It's not because of government itself.

54:28.600 --> 54:36.240
It's just because of who runs the government and the power of money these days that basically

54:36.240 --> 54:38.840
democracy is the last thing they want.

54:38.840 --> 54:40.480
And it also ties into foreign policy.

54:40.480 --> 54:44.640
I think that's true in general, although I think still at the local level, I think there's

54:44.640 --> 54:47.160
some good people in government.

54:47.160 --> 54:50.360
And I was surprised because I sort of took that attitude when I was a community organizer.

54:50.360 --> 54:51.920
Maybe I sold out when I went to government.

54:51.920 --> 54:55.720
But I recognize there are a lot of people there who really got into government because

54:55.720 --> 54:59.200
they wanted communities to be successful, because they wanted to help communities.

54:59.200 --> 55:01.960
They really did want to be public servants.

55:01.960 --> 55:06.540
And I think over time, they just get worn down by the bureaucracy and by the processes.

55:06.540 --> 55:11.360
And so I spend a lot of time just trying to help people think in a new way about, with

55:11.360 --> 55:15.600
elected officials, giving them a new sense about what power is so they don't feel threatened

55:15.600 --> 55:18.120
when people say we want more power in our communities.

55:18.120 --> 55:23.560
To recognize that power isn't a finite resource, the more you hold onto it, the less you have.

55:23.560 --> 55:24.560
Power is like love.

55:24.560 --> 55:26.640
The more you give it away, the more you get, right?

55:26.640 --> 55:28.960
There's all these untapped resources in the community.

55:28.960 --> 55:32.840
And what kind of power do elected officials have if nobody identifies with their government?

55:32.840 --> 55:35.960
If people are angry at their government, people feel alienated from their government, if fewer

55:35.960 --> 55:37.600
and fewer people are voting?

55:37.600 --> 55:38.600
That's no power.

55:38.600 --> 55:44.040
The only way government's going to be powerful is if people actually identify with it.

55:44.040 --> 55:47.720
If they start thinking of themselves as citizens again, if they're actually actively involved

55:47.720 --> 55:51.880
in their communities and with their government on a regular basis, rather than just seeing

55:51.880 --> 55:59.600
a democracy as something where you go out and vote every year or two, if that.

55:59.600 --> 56:04.520
Do you feel like you've had any success in this endeavor as far as the government?

56:04.520 --> 56:10.080
Oh, you know, I think it's been – there were a lot of successes in Seattle.

56:10.080 --> 56:12.280
People all over the world are saying we want to be like Seattle.

56:12.280 --> 56:17.640
They're talking about the Seattle model, where we did involve 30,000 people in the

56:17.640 --> 56:21.360
development of 38 bottom-up plans, where tens of thousands of people have been involved

56:21.360 --> 56:24.680
in creating over 5,000 community self-help projects.

56:24.680 --> 56:27.160
That's the Seattle model that people are excited about.

56:27.160 --> 56:31.200
Unfortunately, Seattle's walking away from that model some, but other places are really

56:31.200 --> 56:35.720
stepping up and saying we want to be like Seattle, or as they think Seattle is.

56:35.720 --> 56:42.080
So I see moves towards bottom-up planning, matching fund programs, participatory budgeting,

56:42.080 --> 56:44.320
all kinds of models being used around the world.

56:44.320 --> 56:49.000
You know, village assemblies in India, all kinds of models where people are getting engaged

56:49.000 --> 56:53.560
and people are rediscovering both at the community level and in government the value of democracy

56:53.560 --> 56:54.560
and the value of community.

56:54.560 --> 56:56.760
That's what gives me hope.

56:56.760 --> 56:58.560
You know, I do a lot of traveling everywhere I go.

56:58.560 --> 57:01.360
I meet great people who are really working hard to make a difference.

57:01.360 --> 57:06.120
A lot of people are feeling kind of frustrated because they're working really hard and wondering

57:06.120 --> 57:10.080
what kind of difference am I making, but I think collectively we're making a huge difference

57:10.080 --> 57:15.760
because it's not just this local effort, but these local efforts being replicated absolutely

57:15.760 --> 57:16.760
everywhere I go in the world.

57:16.760 --> 57:20.640
I particularly see, you know, with the Occupy movement, everywhere I go there's an Occupy

57:20.640 --> 57:21.640
movement.

57:21.640 --> 57:25.960
You know, one in London, I was one in Toronto, in Victoria, everywhere I go.

57:25.960 --> 57:29.000
And to share those stories from around the world gives people a sense of hope.

57:29.000 --> 57:30.320
We aren't in it alone.

57:30.320 --> 57:33.160
This is part of a global struggle and if we're going to make change we've really got to

57:33.160 --> 57:34.160
start at the grassroots.

57:34.160 --> 57:35.160
All right.

57:35.160 --> 57:36.160
Thanks.

57:36.160 --> 57:56.000
Thank you.